Contents
Vol 320, Issue 5872
Contents
This Week in Science
Editorial
Editors' Choice
Departments
Products & Materials
News of the Week
- Review of Vaccine Failure Prompts a Return to Basics
At a summit meeting on AIDS vaccines held last week, it was agreed that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases needs to set a new course for a field that seems to have hit a brick wall.
- NASA's Stern Quits Over Mars Exploration Plans
S. Alan Stern has resigned as NASA’s science chief after a running dispute with his boss, Administrator Michael Griffin, over how to manage the financial squeeze on NASA’s $4.6 billion science effort.
- Germs Take a Bite Out of Antibiotics
A broad survey of soil microbes shows that numerous species devour even the most potent drugs, researchers report on page 100 of this week's issue of Science, fueling worries about the dwindling power of our main weapons against infections.
- China's LAMOST Observatory Prepares for the Ultimate Test
Engineers this month are installing the eyes and optic nerves of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), slated to begin operating this fall in China's industrialized north. LAMOST’s spectral deluge of tens of millions of galaxies and stars should offer new insights into galaxy formation, including our own Milky Way.
- U.S. Asked to Bolster Ties With China
The U.S. military has more to gain than lose by working with Chinese scientists on fundamental research, according to the Pentagon’s former director of basic research, who argues for the removal of obstacles between the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and China despite the military rivalry between the two countries.
- DNA From Fossil Feces Breaks Clovis Barrier
An international team reports online in Science this week what some experts consider the strongest evidence yet for an earlier peopling of the Americas: 14,000-year-old ancient DNA from fossilized human excrement (coprolites), found in caves in south-central Oregon.
ScienceScope
Random Samples
Newsmakers
News Focus
- All in the Stroma: Cancer's Cosa Nostra
After focusing for decades on what happens within tumor cells to make them go wrong, biologists are turning to the tumor environment and finding a network of coconspirators.
- Magnetic Measurements Hint at Toastier Superconductivity
At the American Physical Society meeting, researchers reported evidence that superconductivity might persist in high-temperature superconductors up to at least 200 K, albeit in tiny, disconnected patches, implying that current materials may not have reached the ultimate limits.
- Laser Plays Chemical Matchmaker
At the American Physical Society meeting, researchers reported using ultrashort pulses of laser light and the quirks of quantum mechanics to manipulate the forming of chemical bonds.
- Squeeze Play Makes Solid Helium Flow
Preliminary data reported at the American Physical Society meeting provide the most direct evidence yet that ultracold, highly pressurized solid helium can flow like the thinnest possible liquid.
- Puzzling Over a Steller Whodunit
What plunged the North Pacific’s Steller sea lions into a catastrophic decline, and why are numbers still low? After $190 million worth of research, scientists aren’t sure.
Letters
Books
- Confronting Violence Face to Face
Examining photographic, video, forensic, and ethnographic evidence of a wide range of violent situations (from schoolyard bullying to armed conflict), the author argues that violence is not easily triggered and often injures unintended victims.
Policy Forum
- A Case Study of Personalized Medicine
Marketing of unproven tests shows the need for regulatory action to protect public health.
Perspectives
- Toward Understanding Self-Splicing
The crystal structure of a group II intron shows a complex architecture with metal ions at the catalytic center.
- Blooms Like It Hot
A link exists between global warming and the worldwide proliferation of harmful cyanobacterial blooms.
- Deconstructing Pluripotency
The requirements for reprogramming different somatic cell types to a pluripotent state may not be equivalent.
- Tel2 Finally Tells One Story
The ability of a protein to interact with an entire family of phosphorylating enzymes explains its diverse functions across species.
- Small-Scale Observations Tell a Cosmological Story
Graphite whiskers found in meteorites provide clues to the chemical environment in the early solar system.
- Creating Musical Variation
Inspiration for composition may come from natural sounds, chance, and methods based on chaos theory.
Review
Brevia
- Bats Limit Insects in a Neotropical Agroforestry System
Exclosure experiments show that bats contribute to the reduction of insects on coffee plants more than has been appreciated and to a comparable degree as birds.
- Bats Limit Arthropods and Herbivory in a Tropical Forest
In a lowland tropical forest, bats consume insect herbivores on understory plants at least as much as birds do, thereby also indirectly limiting damage to the plants.
Research Articles
- Aztec Arithmetic Revisited: Land-Area Algorithms and Acolhua Congruence Arithmetic
Analysis of ancient property records shows that the Aztecs used common algorithms and a distance standard for calculating land area and specific symbols to represent fractions.
- Crystal Structure of a Self-Spliced Group II Intron
The autocatalytic group II intron contains a network of unusual tertiary RNA interactions that form a metalloribozyme active site with parallels to eukaryotic spliceosomes.
Reports
- Revealing Magnetic Interactions from Single-Atom Magnetization Curves
A scanning tunneling microscope with a spin-polarized tip can characterize the magnetic properties of single atoms on a nonmagnetic surface.
- The Roles of Subsurface Carbon and Hydrogen in Palladium-Catalyzed Alkyne Hydrogenation
The population of hydrogen and carbon within a palladium catalyst governs the hydrogenation of alkynes on its surface.
- The Electrical Conductivity of Post-Perovskite in Earth's D'' Layer
A major silicate mineral deep in Earth’s mantle has a high electrical conductivity, causing a sufficiently strong coupling with the core to explain variations in Earth’s rotation.
- Graphite Whiskers in CV3 Meteorites
Graphite whiskers, a naturally occurring allotrope of carbon, have been found in primitive grains in several meteorites and may explain spectral features of supernovae.
- Covariant Glacial-Interglacial Dust Fluxes in the Equatorial Pacific and Antarctica
A 500,000-year record shows that more dust, which provides iron and other nutrients, was blown into the equatorial Pacific during glacial periods than during warm periods.
- Selective Blockade of MicroRNA Processing by Lin28
A protein necessary for reprogramming skin fibroblasts to pluripotent stem cells is an RNA-binding protein that normally inhibits microRNA processing in embryonic cells.
- Bacteria Subsisting on Antibiotics
A wide range of bacteria in the environment, many related to human pathogens, are both resistant to antibiotics and consume them as their only source of carbon for growth.
- Reversible Compartmentalization of de Novo Purine Biosynthetic Complexes in Living Cells
The enzymes needed for purine biosynthesis cluster in the cytoplasm when cells are depleted of purine but dissociate when the demand for purine is low.
- Single-Molecule DNA Sequencing of a Viral Genome
The M13 viral genome has been resequenced by a single-molecule method that allows simultaneous sequencing of 280,000 DNA strands of 25 bases with 100 percent coverage.
- Entrainment of Neuronal Oscillations as a Mechanism of Attentional Selection
In monkeys that are paying attention to a rhythmic stimulus, brain oscillations become tuned to the stimulus so that the response in the visual cortex is enhanced.
- Episodic-Like Memory in Rats: Is It Based on When or How Long Ago?
Unlike humans, who can place past events within a temporal framework, rats can only remember when an event happened by tracking the time elapsed since its occurrence.
From the AAAS Office of Publishing and Member Services
